At Blizzcon 2015, louder cheers for new Hearthstone cards than a new WoW class.

Share this story

The closest I have ever come to attending a big-tent church revival was at Blizzcon two years ago in sunny Anaheim, California. There, Chris Metzen—the man with the unenviable task of being in charge of Blizzard lore—took the stage to talk about the new World of Warcraft expansion Warlords of Draenor. Looking like a comfortably retired rock star, Metzen went into a long speech that involved excursions into the now-ancient history of Azeroth, and trips down memory lane to long-ago dungeons and battlefields that made the room ring out with cries of "For the Horde!" Such a thing wouldn't have been out of place at a professional wrestling event, the crowd somehow whipped into a frenzy for a decade-old game with slowly eroding subscription numbers by Metzen’s nostalgia-infused rhetoric.

By the end of Metzen’s speech, I was ready to fight Blizzard customer services to reopen the Warcraft account I had lost eight years ago. So frenzied was the crowd that he could have led the combined forces of the Horde and the Alliance on a crusade to storm the gates of hell—or at least the Disneyland just down the road. I'd been to fan conventions before, but Blizzcon was something else; it felt like a celebration and renewal of an old faith.

Enlarge/ Despite Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm stealing the show, fans still payed homage to Blizzard classics with impressive cosplay.

That didn't happen at this year's Blizzcon. Not because enthusiasm at the two-day event has dropped, but because Blizzard and its audience have changed so much. Two years ago, Blizzcon was about flattering people like me, a fan with rosy memories of Warcraft RTS battles and early World of Warcraft quests that was still hung-up on whether Kerrigan could be redeemed in StarCraft, or whether or not demon-slaying could be made even more efficient in Diablo. That was always the joy of Blizzcon: it was a magical place where 1990s PC gaming never ended.

Blizzcon 2015, on the other hand, was about a Blizzard that's reaching new audiences in new genres without compromising its identity. You still see all the same old characters: a haughty Illidan cosplayer strutting around the convention hall lobby, a Jaina Proudmoore in line at concessions. But the old gang is like Mickey and Goofy at Disneyland: everyone loves them, and everyone recognises them, but just as Disney's younger fans are there because of Pixar, Blizzard’s are there because of Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch.

When a new Hearthstone card was demonstrated on stage, and it was shown turning a normal deck into a pile of Epic Minions, people screamed like Elvis and The Beatles had just appeared on stage to perform a set together. The audience that was faintly detached from World of Warcraft during the main presentation fell in love with Cho'gall, an old Warcraft character that had just appeared in Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's up-and-coming MOBA.

I was sitting behind two deaf women during the opening presentation, and watched one of them progressively get more excited with each new announcement. When Blizzard revealed that Tracer, a plucky British teleportation expert and probably one of the coolest new characters in Overwatch, will be joining the Heroes of the Storm MOBA cast, she ripped the baseball cap from her head, kneaded it in her hands, then began frantically signing to her pal, then pointing at the screen. I don't know which games they were fans of. It looked like all of them.

Hearthstone dominated this year's Blizzcon, with the World Championship taking place during the show.

Josh Augustine

Hotform (left) placed second in the Hearthstone World Championship.

Josh Augustine

The Hearthstone stage in all its tavern-like glory.

Josh Augustine

Some impressive Annoy-o-Tron cosplay.

Josh Augustine

Players from all the over world competed inside the public Hearthstone tavern.

Josh Augustine

Players were treated to live music during matches.

Josh Augustine

Hearthstone has become an extremely popular spectator sport, as well as a fun game to play.

Josh Augustine

That's a pretty massive shift for Blizzard, which has spent the last two decades being the "Warcraft, StarCraft, and sometimes Diablo" company. It also reflects a broader change. While Blizzard always cultivated a reputation for excellence, that excellence was also tied to a degree of conservatism. Blizzard games were polished, perfected versions of good things that either existed elsewhere, or that Blizzard had made before. For a long time, the most daring thing Blizzard did was create an in-game auction house for Diablo III… and its eventual removal was the greatest moment in franchise history since Diablo II.

Now, Blizzard has left its comfort zone, and become somewhat daring in its approach to the genres that other developers and games have defined. Overwatch is Blizzard's first shooter and, just a month into its beta, already has all the makings of a massive success. Hearthstone has become a phenomenon both as a collectible card game and as a spectator experience: the game is routinely one of the most popular games on Twitch's streaming service. Heroes of the Storm, meanwhile, is a MOBA that almost gleefully breaks the rules and conventions that have defined the genre since its inception.

Indeed, where Blizzard developers used to boast about "getting things right', they're now eager to talk about the various design heresies they're in the process of committing.

Further Reading

"We like to break the genre," Heroes of the Storm designer Kent-Erik Hagman admitted. 'We absolutely do not care at all. We like to break the rules and bend the rules. That's why we make heroes like Abathur. Lost Vikings. Leoric."

Each of those heroes has tweaked the nose of MOBA design, either by forcing players to control multiple characters at once, or by forcing them to be immobile support units working behind the scenes. Sometimes they even do away with the conventional understanding of death in a MOBA altogether. Meanwhile the game's newest hero Cho'Gall, a two-headed ogre that has to be controlled by two players simultaneously, brings an amusing element of potato-sack racing to the game.

Blizzard does, of course, risk failure as it moves away from the likes of StarCraft, World of Warcraft, and Diablo. But it seems more willing to embrace such a move now.

Enlarge/ The announcement of the next World of Warcraft expansion Legion received a muted responsecompared to previous shows.

The first thing shown at Blizzcon this year was a retrospective on StarCraft, which included the story of how the original game was built on the back of a rare public failure for the studio. Its original vision for StarCraft was widely derided as "Orcs in space" when it was first revealed, and Blizzard was so stung by its first public drubbing that it ended up completely reinventing the game and, almost by accident, the RTS genre. After years of comfortable success—the Diablo III auction house debacle notwithstanding—Blizzard is reclaiming its identity as a studio that can innovate as well as refine.

And it’s come not a moment too soon, because the old Blizzard magic might be fading.

Further Reading

This year, when Chris Metzen came out to talk about the next World of Warcraft expansion, Legion, the audience was less rabid than politely attentive. His calls to the crowd received considerably cooler responses than they did two years ago. The energy in the room wasn't helped by the dubious Warcraft movie trailer, its sober melodrama leaving everyone wondering if the games had secretly been lame this whole time. But there’s no denying that World of Warcraft is in the autumn of its years. It may still be enormously successful, and still a breed apart from the rest of the MMO genre, but it doesn’t capture the imagination any more.

And that's fine. World of Warcraft enjoyed a long run on centre stage, but now it's time for a new generation of players to decide what Blizzard means to them. So far they've chosen the cheery confines of a make-believe inn in Azeroth, where everyone is always up for a game of cards, and the endless battle royale of Heroes of the Storm, where the icons of Blizzard's legendary past are gathered together and made new again.

Robert Zacny is a freelance writer specialising in PC games and e-sports, and the host of the Three Moves Ahead podcast. He has written for the likes of Eurogamer, PC Gamer, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun.You can find him on Twitter at @RobZacny.